That doesn't excuse the decline of their UX. They are adoptingany of the tactics and antipatterns used by other media companies that sow the seeds of discontent with their product.
Netflix's goal with entertainment is to monopolize your free time. Its why they are willing to promote binge-watching, its why they consider games like Fortnite to be competitors in addition to (and in some cases more than) HBO and Hulu.
Their UI is now meant to hide their complete lack of content.
They lost all the big catalogs and deals as Fox, Disney etc. ended their licensing deals. And even though they’ve pumped billions into original content, this can’t make up for the hundreds of titles they lost.
So, the new UI is meant to make you overlook all that and make you watch Netflix original content. To quote myself [1] their selection is ridiculously tragically bad.
https://www.polygon.com/2019/1/17/18187400/netflix-vs-fortni...